Email: Nintendo Switch Online is Anti consumerist

Hi Sean,
When the Nintendo Switch first launched and I heard about paid online service. I was very much against it. There is no reason consoles should ask consumers to pay for online services. Any costs of servers or other such associated costs for online play should be included in the cost of the game. PC being a great example, as there is no additional cost for pc gamers to play online. Even so I came around and I was willing to pay for Nintendo Switch Online service, as I really enjoyed gaming on the Switch. But after recently learning more details of the online service, I find that the online service is highly oppressive against consumer freedom. The things Nintendo is doing today with their online service is the same thing Microsoft said when they were launching the Xbox One, except Microsoft changed their tune after the huge backlash. One of my main concerns with the online service is the game save data. Why has Nintendo decided to hijack our save data, why can I not backup my saves to an sd card. Other consoles have allowed this, even previous Nintendo consoles have let put you save files on an sd card. Secondly even the online service we will receive seems to be the same one that we have received for the last year and half for free. Where is the value add? Is it the NES games, well I don’t really need Nintendo to play NES games online, you can do that with plenty of emulators, plus who really wants to play old NES games online? The Switch has a lot of momentum, but I think the Online Service as it is could severely cripple the Switch. The service is not just badly designed, I think Nintendo has purposely designed it as such. As a consumer why should I pay for something that actively works to take away my freedom of choice. I enjoy gaming on the Switch and I was looking forward to purchasing upcoming games, but now I question if I should continue purchasing Switch games. I am tired of seeing Nintendo’s two faces . You never know which one you will see, is it the old Nintendo which brought us countless great games or is it the new arrogant Nintendo.
The other thing I learned from the recent direct is that Nintendo’s first party lineup for this year and next is downright atrocious. What happened to the whole getting more games because of console and handheld software departments merging. Not only are we not getting more first party games, but this particular lineup is really bad. Aside from Smash and Metroid Prime 4 (which we know nothing about) the lineup is very bad, is this the developers making the games they want. There are many questionable games in the lineup. I don’t think we have seen two years of back to back horrible first party lineup ever before on previous Nintendo consoles. I am highly disappointment that Nintendo is porting NSMB Wii U to Switch, which likely means we wont see a new 2d mario game on Switch any time soon or maybe ever.

2006-2008 was great Wii software that did magical sales results: Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Play, etc. But all that software was started during the Gamecube dregs. When software started after Wii was successful, we got Wii Music, Metroid Other M, etc.

The entire 3DS line-up and design was due to the arrogance of the DS success. Who designed the shitty 3DS: Shigeru Miyamoto.

After the NES success, the SNES launched to great disappointment. Super Mario World was good but not Earth shattering like SMB 1, 2 or 3. Most of the SNES games were sequels to NES games. Yawn. SNES couldn’t outsell Genesis in America until the release of Donkey Kong Country.

The Gameboy Advance was also fairly shitty. It was missing two buttons, and the original hardware was very hard to see the screen. It wasn’t until the PSP showed up that Nintendo sharpened their game.

Is Nintendo arrogance rising again that will destroy the Switch not unlike Wii during its third year? It is still too early to say. This Nintendo Online crap certainly isn’t helping. I don’t see or hear anyone saying, “Man, I got to order Nintendo Online to play NES game over multiplayer online!” I think Nintendo saw the NES Classic Mini sales success and thought NES games would keep providing value.